Author: Justin Lane

Political dark money keeps influencing and buying elections, and it only seems to be getting worse. The corporatist Supreme Court continues showing favor to corporations and groups of billionaires will keep buying elections. Citizens United opened the doors when it allowed unlimited spending for political action committees (PACs) in elections and billionaires have been putting that to the test. 501(C)(4) groups, of recent infamy, are often required to serve a social welfare purpose of some kind but regrettably that requirement often goes unmet. These groups can accept donations without ever disclosing where their money came from and will often...

Over the course of his career, President Obama has had many opportunities to make great strides for progressive causes but has remained sadly ineffective on important issues at the hands of his opposition. Sure, the president has faced staunch opposition from the right. But continuing to seek bipartisan support for every policy he needs to see through enactment will only serve to distance him from the goals he was sent to Washington by the people to achieve. “Change.” The rallying cry that Obama ran on, promising that he would come to revolutionize politics in Washington away from the daily...

Sometimes, you just can’t trust that the advice you’re being given, even from a “professional,” is all that straightforward or uninfluenced. Eugene Goldman is a physician in Pennsylvania who was convicted earlier this week for being involved in a kickback scheme involving the referral of patients to hospice care for over a decade according to a press release from the Department of Justice. Goldman made a deceptive practice out of referring his Medicare and Medicaid patients to Home Care Hospice Inc., of which he was the director. The organization the doctor referred his Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to was...

Habeas Corpus is such a fundamental institution in the American justice system that it can be hard for the average citizen to contemplate that it could be taken away. But it can, and for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the requirement that it be extended to an innocent man is not so obvious. Floyd Perkins was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1993 for the stabbing of another man, Damarr Jones, after a party in Flint, Michigan. Perkins exhausted his appeals in 1997 and as such, has been in prison since that time. But over...

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last week that American Commercial Colleges Inc. has agreed to pay the United States up to $2.5 million to settle claims that it had falsified loan revenue reports in order to be eligible for federal funding. According to the release, which you can read in its entirety here, American Commercial College Inc. is a for-profit educational institution operating in Texas that sought funding through Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. In order to be funded under that program, an institution must adhere to what is referred to as...